I’ve hit critical mass for My Immortals Books 7. I’m over 50,000 words now which means mostly the story is there and now I just need to write it better. I’m mostly pretty sure that the title will be My Demon Warlord. Final word count will be around 95,000. I’m doing my first paper read […]

I’ve hit critical mass for My Immortals Books 7. I’m over 50,000 words now which means mostly the story is there and now I just need to write it better. I’m mostly pretty sure that the title will be My Demon Warlord. Final word count will be around 95,000.

I’m doing my first paper read through and I have already completely re-written chapter 1 three times. This is good news, actually, as dire as that sounds. I am revising using a fountain pen with copper ink. This is fun.

The chapter I thought might be chapter 1 is currently chapter 22.

I love doing the first paper read through. It’s when magic happens. I see themes I didn’t know where there, and that will be interesting to follow through with, and I get to see where things really work and where they don’t, and knowing that matters a lot.

Today, I went with friends to see Fifty Shades of Grey. I actually enjoyed the movie. To be brutally honest, if not for Jamie Dornan’s terrible performance, this would be an A+ movie. I’ll be even more brutally honest: all the nuance of the power negotiations that are buried/absent in the books because the author […]

Today, I went with friends to see Fifty Shades of Grey. I actually enjoyed the movie. To be brutally honest, if not for Jamie Dornan’s terrible performance, this would be an A+ movie.

I’ll be even more brutally honest: all the nuance of the power negotiations that are buried/absent in the books because the author clearly did not understand the subject matter, come front and center in the movie. Johnson was the only one on screen who got that, and she absolutely nailed it. The movie is worth seeing just for that nuanced portrayal of an inexperienced young woman navigating issues of desire and consent. Really, really good.

Jamie Dornan’s contempt for his role was painfully evident everywhere it mattered. In every scene that should have crackled with tension and played off Anastasia Steele navigating those deep waters, Dornan was phoning it in. In every other scene where he should have been smoking up the screen he was meh.

At one point I whispered to one of my companions that I was still Team Jacob. He was that terrible.

They should have cast Alexander Skarsgaard as Christian. He’s smoking hot, and even if he, personally, feels contempt for BDSM (I have no such information, by the way) he’s a good enough actor to have convinced us he wasn’t. Dornan isn’t.

I’m nearing critical mass on My Immortals Book 7, which is awesome. Meanwhile I am mulling over potential titles. I had some great suggestions at my facebook page (Thank you so much!) so I thought I’d throw together a poll with a few titles and see what people think. If you have a suggestion, let […]

I’m nearing critical mass on My Immortals Book 7, which is awesome. Meanwhile I am mulling over potential titles. I had some great suggestions at my facebook page (Thank you so much!) so I thought I’d throw together a poll with a few titles and see what people think.

If you have a suggestion, let me know in the comments, too. Once I have the title, I can finalize the cover…

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Reading My RITA reading is all done. Now I’m back to reading Judith Ivory. It’s a slice of reading bliss… Writing I attended a writing function last night where someone else paid for dinner and I got to chat with lots of Romance authors and persons in the business. But I had to drive to […]

Reading

My RITA reading is all done. Now I’m back to reading Judith Ivory. It’s a slice of reading bliss…

Writing

I attended a writing function last night where someone else paid for dinner and I got to chat with lots of Romance authors and persons in the business. But I had to drive to San Francisco and … Hey! I did find parking on the street, there’s that! My car, bought used, and now paid for, is getting cranky in its old age. I never know which key (I have two, no, no fob…never never buy a car without a fob….) will actually open the door. Any door. And now I’m never sure which key will actually start the car. One of these days the answer will be “None of them!” Sigh. Anyway, I was glad to find parking because that meant I wouldn’t have to give the valet 10 minutes of instructions about what to do if the door(s) won’t open and how to voodoo the ignition. But I didn’t get home until midnight and I had to be up at 5:15AM — I was at least smart enough to not even try for the 4:00AM workout — and so my point is I’m really tired right now.

I’ve been working on My Immortals 7 and things are going pretty well. I’m liking the story a lot and am almost at the point where the story is really essentially done and there’s not much plot left to deal with.

What the title will be, I don’t know yet. I have a few ideas, but nothing I want to commit to yet, and that is why I cannot show you the cover for Book 7 — because the cover is all done except for a place holder title from Book 5. But I love, love, love the cover.

I’m going to be writing another historical novella for a second anthology with Grace Burrowes, Miranda Neville, and Shana Galen. The anthology title should be Dancing in the Duke’s Arms. We were able to arrange a custom photo shoot and so provide some very specific requests for poses and emotions to be conveyed for our cover image. We’ve selected the image we want to use, but there is nothing to show you yet.

Also, I know the story I want to write for the anthology, and it’s an idea that keeps nagging at me.

Arithmetic

Six weeks into 2015 already! I should be doing my taxes but I’m not. Yet. ::Shrug::

As some of you may know, I am a fan of Bollywood movies. My knowledge and expertise is narrow, but I’ve been fortunate enough to have people who are knowledgeable provide me with recommendations. Including, as it happens, some members of the offshore development teams I work with. Here’s a list of some of my […]

As some of you may know, I am a fan of Bollywood movies. My knowledge and expertise is narrow, but I’ve been fortunate enough to have people who are knowledgeable provide me with recommendations. Including, as it happens, some members of the offshore development teams I work with.

Here’s a list of some of my favorites, with some links to reviews where I’ve done them. You can find more if you click on my Arjun Rampal Fan Page tab.

This link will take you to my movie review posts, most of them are Bollywood movies so just scroll past the American Sniper review.

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi — This is one of my all-time favorite movies. I love it. You all should watch it. Shah Rukh Kahn.
Om Shanti Om — SRK AND Arjun Rampal
Rajneeti — Arjun with homage to Quentin Tarrantino — so, if violence bothers you, maybe skip, but this is a political film.
The Last Lear — Really really really good movie.
Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham — a recent recommendation from one of the offshore devs I work with. This is about family.
Band Baaja Baaraat — @alisharai recommended this on twitter. Super cute movie with a super hot kiss scene.
Kuch Kuch Hota Hai — SRK, with one of the hottest shoulder touching scenes in the history of ever. Persevere to the 2nd half of the movie.
My Name is Khan — SRK. I bawled like a baby.
EMI — kind of a silly movie but thoroughly redeemed by one of the love stories — probably a must see for Romance authors.

Over the weekend I did my first big reorganization of My Immortals 7. This time around, I’m trying to keep some vague keeping track of stuff in Scrivener, because it’s a great tool for that, while doing the actual writing per usual. Scrivener was very helpful in allowing me to structure, label, and organize the […]

Over the weekend I did my first big reorganization of My Immortals 7. This time around, I’m trying to keep some vague keeping track of stuff in Scrivener, because it’s a great tool for that, while doing the actual writing per usual. Scrivener was very helpful in allowing me to structure, label, and organize the story the way I wanted to.

I don’t write in scenes. At least so far I don’t. But I have chapters that must move together, if I do move things around, because they’re linked by time or story flow. And Scrivener made that easy.

But it does mean I didn’t write as many words as I’d hoped. On the other hand, because the new order makes me happier and because now everything flows and is paced better, it was easy to see how and where I would up the ante.

]]>http://carolynjewel.com/wordpress/2015/01/20/mass-reorg-aka-progress/feed/0I think I have a problem with this: American Sniperhttp://carolynjewel.com/wordpress/2015/01/18/think-problem-american-sniper/
http://carolynjewel.com/wordpress/2015/01/18/think-problem-american-sniper/#commentsMon, 19 Jan 2015 04:09:56 +0000http://carolynjewel.com/wordpress/?p=5309Writer's Diary - Romance Author With A Few Opinions

I read the book American Sniper shortly after it came out. I have also read several other memoirs of Navy SEALS. Chris Kyle, the author of American Sniper, as you probably know, retired from active service and was later killed by a mentally disturbed man at a shooting range Kyle owned. Now there’s a movie […]

I read the book American Sniper shortly after it came out. I have also read several other memoirs of Navy SEALS. Chris Kyle, the author of American Sniper, as you probably know, retired from active service and was later killed by a mentally disturbed man at a shooting range Kyle owned. Now there’s a movie about the book.

FYI: I have now added a paragraph at the bottom to address yet another controversy about this movie.

The controversy I’ve heard around the movie goes like this: Kyle killed people and talked about it. He was callous and unfeeling, and possibly not a very nice person. I have seen comparisons between success of the movie with things that are unrelated that imply that Americans of the sort who would see American Sniper are terrible people. Example, juxtaposing the movie’s successful opening with people who gave Bill Cosby a standing ovation.

Today, after writing a draft of this post, I went to see the movie because, one, I wanted to see it anyway, and two, since I was so bothered by some of the conversation, not seeing the movie would leave my opinions and thoughts less informed than they should be.

The Review Portion

Clint Eastwood is a very good director. There’s no doubt about it. Great material to work with, and yet I often felt that if I’d not read the book, I couldn’t have followed the movie as well. In fact, several times, I thought, oh, right, that’s [some character] from the book, because those roles were not clear to me. Alas, and probably no surprise, Kyle’s wife was sadly one-dimensional. I don’t mean the actress, I mean the screenplay and the directorial decisions. More than once I whispered “eff you.” Because of course the woman is shown as unable to understand the man she married. So, you know, the eff.

More important, I did not see this movie as a glorification of killing or an endorsement of the war in Iraq; at times quite the opposite. One of the strengths of the movie was showing moments of internal conflict and Kyle’s (as he was shown to us on the screen) refusal to acknowledge that even his brothers-in-arms had times of profound doubt.

Frankly, though I enjoyed the movie, and though it made me as sad as ever about war in general, and Iraq in particular, it’s not Eastwood’s best work. It’s a bit uneven and might have been better served by spending slightly less time on shooting and explosions and more on demonstrating the brotherhood of the soldiers. Thus ends the review portion of this post.

On War And the Warrior Trope

Here’s a fact, there are branches of the military, the SEALs being one, that have achieved a mystical standing. By definition, these men are extraordinary. They embody everything we glorify about warriors. I find it odd not to acknowledge the power of that trope and the reality behind it. Spartans. Athenians. Amazons. Roman Gladiators. Alexander The Great. Picts. Scots. The history of humans includes the history of war and warfare. Setting aside issues of the elision of women and minorities from history and warfare, this is us. As humans. We can recognize and admit the power of the warrior trope without also elevating war to heroic status.

Story vs. Truth

The movie represents Kyle at three removes. Kyle, the person, is gone and unable to speak for himself. His memoir is a writing and all writing is a remove from the person who is the writer. More, when there is a co-writer, there is yet another remove. What’s on the page are the words that convey words spoken, not the actual experience.

Writers are tricky people. They understand how and when to manipulate with words. It behooves us all, when we are reading a text, to remember that fact. It’s even more important when the writer of a memoir isn’t the subject of the memoir. And even so we cannot represent or assume the words on the page are equivalent to Kyle. They are a representation of him. And now we have a movie of the book; a representation of a representation.

The Thing that Bothers Me

It bothers me that there seems to be a conflation of Kyle, the movie, and its viewers that suggests that because Kyle killed people for a living that all the viewers of the movie are ascribed bloodthirsty motivations for seeing the movie. Further, suggesting there is some relation between a SEAL sniper doing his job and the alleged actions of Bill Cosby is offensive. How is a soldier doing what his country pays him to do anything like Cosby?

Whatever you may feel about the role the US is playing in the world, we should not be denigrating the men and women who serve in our military nor should we be making sly or not so sly insinuations about the moral worth of members of the military because we might disagree with US politics or decisions to send our military into war. Kyle, personally, did not set US policy. He did not commit crimes.

It is entirely possible for someone to read and see American Sniper while maintaining an ability to separate the actions and culpability of a White House Administration that put our country at war in Iraq under less than truthful circumstances with the actions of the soldiers who were sent to fight.

Bill Cosby is alleged to have committed several crimes. Assaults against women whom he allegedly drugged so that they could not object or consent. It is offensive to me that anyone would conflate the part-of-the-job actions of a member of the US military with actions that are a crime and suggest that viewers of the movie must also support Cosby.

Further, I have read American Sniper and seen the movie. I have not become a bloodthirsty, jackbooted conservative. Nor would I have given Bill Cosby a standing ovation. But then, I would also never have gone to see Cosby, knowing the allegations against him. I can deplore that the US went to war in Iraq at the same time that I support the women and men who are sent to fight on our behalves.

Idiots are Not an Excuse

Just now I saw tweets about the movie in which someone screen-capped several tweets in which people who saw the movie said they now hated Iraqis and want to kill “them” where “them” was a racial epithet. That tweet said with full ironic sarcasm: “It’s just a movie.”

Kyle was killed by an American, after his service was over. Not an Iraqi. Should the movie not have been made because there are idiots out there incapable of seeing the tragic irony of that? What should we do, give a test before the movie and refuse to admit people who we feel lack critical thinking abilities?

It is equally possible to see this movie and think, as I did, no wonder they hate us. Yes. That’s right. It’s not just a movie. The problem isn’t the movie. The problem lies in the hearts of minds of the people who see the movie.